


Granted

by aeli_kindara



Series: Supernatural Codas [19]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Curses, Episode Tag, Episode: s15e10 The Heroes' Journey, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Season/Series 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 11:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22455763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: “So, what?” Dean runs his finger down the list.Fighting ability,reads the first line. “Do we need to — go get in a fight?”Cas is frowning, leaning over his shoulder. But it’s Sam who answers: “I don’t think so. I think we just need to — well — talk about it.”Dean recoils instinctively. “Talkabout —?”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Supernatural Codas [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/877383
Comments: 130
Kudos: 925





	Granted

When Cas walks into the bunker, Sam and Dean are in the middle of putting out the fire.

It’s not Dean’s fault. Sam’s the one who insisted they both stay away from the kitchen — that it would be too hazardous in their current state. _Sandwiches,_ he insisted. _We can’t kill ourselves making sandwiches._

_Wanna bet?_ Dean had muttered, nerves and pride still raw from the halting journey back from Garth’s. But he’d snagged the toaster from the kitchen while Sam wasn’t looking; after a day like that, damn him if his tiny ration of cheese wasn’t going to be _melty._

So: the fire.

Sam’s flapping at it with his jacket. Dean’s running for water — no, the fire extinguisher; shouldn’t use water on electrical fires —

And then Cas is there at the top of the stairs, head tilted sideways, staring down at them like he’s trying to figure out if he’s ever met a bigger pair of idiots.

Dean guesses the answer is no.

\---

“Dean wanted to toast his,” Sam explains, over the smoking wreckage of what used to be their kitchen appliance.

Cas is sitting across from them at the table. He closes his eyes briefly. Opens them again. “So it’s happening here too.”

“What?” says Dean.

\---

The angels, it turns out, have lost their mojo.

“Heaven is a mess,” Cas tells them. “They needed me to help with emergency repairs. I’m sorry it took me so long to get back. If I’d known —”

“Hang on,” interrupts Dean. “So you’ve still got _your_ powers?”

Cas looks at him. “Such as they are.”

It’s not just them.

It’s not just them, but it isn’t everyone, either — Cas is fine. Garth and his family seemed fine. Dean thinks of the kid at the Kwik Stop — _psoriasis is back._ Is not having psoriasis a God-given superpower?

Shit, is he gonna have that to deal with next?

“Garth told us about this place in Alaska,” he tells Cas later. “For getting your luck back. We were gonna go, but — now we can’t drive a mile without Baby crapping out on us.”

He keeps his voice low. Sam is working in the library — walling himself steadily into a fortress of research. Cas bought beer, because Cas is the fucking best, and _his_ cards still work; now they’re each sipping on a longneck, sitting at the map table and watching Sam mutter to himself in the next room.

“That must be difficult for you,” Cas says.

It takes Dean a moment to remember what he’s talking about. Then he swallows. “I mean — she’s my _girl,_ you know? She’s always been there.”

“You take good care of her.”

Something twists painfully in Dean’s gut; threatens to break. “Sure fuckin’ thought I did. Now —” He swallows, keeps his voice normal, barely above a whisper. “I — I know I take a lot for granted. I have no idea how that card Charlie set up for us works, I eat seven slices of pizza and assume it’ll be fine, but this — Cas, I _know_ my Baby.”

Cas is looking at him with sympathy stitched deep in the lines around his eyes.

And now that it’s coming out, Dean can’t stop it. “I mean, you know what happened? Her spark plugs went. But I just did her spark plugs last year. I've been under her hood since I was five years old; I’ve spent more time with that engine than I have with most people. If I don't —”

He stops. Swallows.

“If I don’t know cars, if I don’t know _that_ car,” he finishes, not looking at Cas, “then what the hell do I know?”

Cas is quiet for a long time. He looks thoughtful, picking at the label on his beer.

\---

The Impala gets — better, after that. Not that Dean’s taking her on any long runs, but around town, she doesn’t act up.

He starts, a little reluctantly, to think about Alaska.

“You know there are no roads to the place Garth told you about,” Cas mentions one day, flipping through a magazine. “You’d have to fly. By bush plane, I assume.”

Okay. Fuck that. Maybe if Baby can get better, everything else can get better too. They just need to — give it time.

\---

Charlie gets in two days later.

She doesn’t know how exactly their own Charlie set up the credit card, but she says she’ll take a look at it — see if she can figure out where things went wrong. She pulls two laptops out of her bag in quick sequence and sets up at the library table. Pretty soon she’s typing busily away, Sam leaning over her shoulder.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she declares finally. “Should work fine.”

“Okay, well,” says Dean. “It doesn’t.”

Charlie sighs. “Here. I’ll show you.”

Which is how Dean finds himself, a couple clicks later, the proud owner-to-be of a giant stuffed shark named Blåhaj.

“IKEA will ship to the post office; they should hold the package.” Charlie’s returning each laptop to its compartment in her oversized messenger bag, buckling it crisply. “I’ve emailed you the tracking number. Anything else I can help with?”

“Wait,” says Sam. He’s frowning like he’s got an idea. “Charlie — why weren’t _you_ affected?”

She turns to look at him. “Oh, I was. You think I’m normal? The other day I forgot the words to the _Ring Verse_.”

Sam looks at her blankly.

Charlie puts her hands on her hips. _“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them? One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them?”_

Sam coughs, then clears his throat. “Right.”

From across the table, Cas looks up. He’s been studying the picture of Blåhaj on Dean’s laptop for whatever reason. “You know it now.”

“Well, I looked it up.”

“But your — y’know.” Dean waves a hand at her half-packed laptop bag. “Computer stuff.”

Sam nods in agreement. “Your hacker skills seem pretty intact.”

“Uh, yeah.” She punctuates it with a little half-nod, emphatic. “Do you guys know how hard it was to catch up on eight years of tech? Y’all have come a _long way_ since we got hit by that EMP.” She pauses to glance between them. “I _earned_ these skills. There’s no fucking way I'm forgetting them.”

She starts scooping cords into her bag, like that’s final.

“Wait,” says Cas from across the table.

Dean turns to look at him. So does Sam. So, after a moment, does Charlie.

Cas looks as shocked as if Dean’s just announced Blåhaj is secretly his long-lost son. He shoves his chair back from the table, half-rises, then slumps back into his seat. He’s staring into the middle distance like he’s working out some very complicated math problem, like he wants to double check and make sure he’s got it right.

“That’s it,” he says, finally. “I know what happened.”

\---

Cas thinks it’s a curse.

“Okay.” Dean frowns. “I mean, I guess we knew that, it’s not like —”

“No.” Cas is pacing, agitated. “No, it’s a curse like — when Jack told the world to stop lying. Only this time it’s Chuck, and he’s decided —”

He comes to a dead stop. “Naomi,” he says.

Then he doesn’t say anything at all. Charlie looks at Sam, and then they both look at Dean.

Dean starts, “Cas, what —”

“Naomi said Chuck came through Heaven. Just before everything started going wrong. And he was in a bad mood, muttering about his ungrateful creation, taking him for granted — and then he started asking her questions. About everything she takes for granted, what she’d do without it. He wouldn’t let her answer, and then he left, and — that’s when the angels’ powers started failing.”

“Okay,” says Dean, “so it sounds like he yanked their mojo, but —”

“No,” says Cas. “He yanked _everyone’s_ mojo. Or, rather — everything they take for granted.”

Sam’s the one who gets it first. “Charlie didn’t lose her hacker skills — because she didn’t take them for granted. She was conscious of how hard she’d worked for them, so —”

“And Dean,” Cas interrupts, turning to fix him in a wild stare. “After our conversation about the Impala — has it given you trouble again since?”

Dean shakes his head slowly. “No…”

“And Garth and his family,” says Sam. “They’re — I mean, they’re grateful for everything they have, right? They don’t take anything for granted. No wonder, after what they’ve been through.”

“And Cas,” says Dean slowly.

It takes him a moment to go on. Then he realizes they’re all looking at him, and he swallows.

“I mean,” he says roughly, “you’ve had to live without your grace before, right? Stands to reason, now you’ve got it back —”

He stops. He feels weirdly vulnerable, talking like that. But Cas is nodding like it makes sense.

Suddenly he turns to Charlie. “The _Song of Eärendil._ Do you remember —?”

For a moment, Charlie just looks surprised. Then she scrunches up her face and says, slowly, “ _Eärendil was a mariner. That tarried in — Arvernien — he built a boat of timber — felled in Nimbrethil to journey in —”_

Then she’s straightening, reciting with confidence. “ _Her sails he wove of silver fair, of silver were her lanterns made, her prow was fashioned like a swan, and light upon her banners laid —”_

“I think that’s good,” Cas says. He turns to Sam and Dean’s stares. “It’s from Lord of the Rings. Charlie forgot the most famous poem, but once she reminded herself of that one — all of her knowledge is still there. She just needed to reclaim it.”

On Dean’s left, Sam’s eyes go suddenly wide.

Dean turns to look at him.

“I — hadn’t been running,” Sam says. His voice is quiet, astonished. “Since Eileen. Only yesterday I went, and I started out tripping over everything, but by the end —”

He breaks off.

“Okay,” says Charlie, into the silence. “So you need to — reclaim everything you’ve lost. Take ownership. That can’t be too hard, can it?”

Sam’s already moving, turning over a sheet on the nearest notepad. “Let’s make a list.”

\---

Half an hour and a round of beers later, they have it all written down: every last thing they used to be good at or thought they were good at, everything they thought they had.

It feels an awful lot like an identity, laid out like that. Dean’s not sure if he feels better or worse, seeing all the things that are no there; thinking about all the things that aren’t.

“So, what?” He runs his finger down the list. _Fighting ability,_ reads the first line. “Do we need to — go get in a fight?”

Cas is frowning, leaning over his shoulder. But it’s Sam who answers: “I don’t think so. I think we just need to — well — talk about it.”

Dean recoils instinctively. “ _Talk_ about —?”

“Yeah. Like —” Sam shrugs awkwardly. “How we learned? And stuff?”

He’s giving Cas a questioning look as he says it. Across the table, Charlie leans back, a small smile on her lips. “Oh, this should be fun.”

Seems to Dean like an hour ago she was ready to peace out of here. Now that they’re supposed to — talk about their childhoods or whatever, apparently she’s just fine to stay.

_Goddamnit._ Dean sighs, lays his palms flat on the table. Might as well get it over with. “Okay. Fighting, I mean — Dad.”

“Taught us everything we knew,” Sam echoes. He smiles. “You remember how he’d make us run laps around those skeazy motels? Every time we missed a block, sparring?”

Dean remembers; remembers fourteen-year-old Sam, too eager, bobbing and dancing around their dad, leaving himself vulnerable for the kind of lessons Dean didn’t want him to learn. Not really. Not yet.

“He used to set up beer cans,” he says. “For shooting practice.” And now they’ve got their own firing range.

“I remember you doing that for me. That summer I wouldn’t let you alone about it — remember? All I wanted was to learn how to shoot a gun.”

Dean feels his mouth quirk. “Sure changed your mind about that, after a while.”

Sam huffs a gentle laugh. “Yeah.”

Charlie is glancing between them like she’s watching a tennis match. “Well, this is adorable and a little creepy,” she comments. “But hunting’s more than shooting and punching, right? I mean, Sam, your little hunter academy — you’re the one who was always drilling everyone on — _Details matter. I know homework sucks, but the more we know, the better we are —”_

Her impression is eerily accurate. Dean stares for a moment, then shakes his head.

Sam looks startled. “Yeah, I mean — that’s Dad too. Stuff he taught us, or stuff we found later, in his journal —”

Only it’s not, Dean realizes.

Yeah, Dad taught them plenty, but — he hid plenty too. And some of the shit they’ve encountered, Dad never even dreamed of.

“Bobby,” he says, out loud without realizing it, and they all turn to him. But — well, it’s true, so he keeps going. “I mean, he’s the one who taught us about devil’s traps, right? And — all kinds of stuff. There wasn’t an obscure monster out there Bobby didn’t have a book on. I mean —” he turns to Cas — “he helped us research _you,_ when you showed up.”

Cas is looking at him with something fond and grave and complicated in his eyes. “I know.”

“And there’s other stuff, too.” Now he’s going, it’s like he can’t stop. “I mean — fighting stuff? Dad was never there when we had the demon knife. Or angel blades — I mean, Cas taught us to use those.”

He remembers when a single angel blade was a prized possession. Now they’ve got dozens in storage.

“If I recall,” Cas says, “you were quite adept before I taught you anything.”

Dean swallows. “Yeah, well. You taught us the blade-spinny throw, remember?”

_He_ sure fucking remembers. Remembers it being more difficult than it had any right to be; remembers Cas patiently positioning him, hands on his shoulders, his hips.

“And we,” says Sam suddenly, fiercely, “I mean — it’s _us._ We taught ourselves so much of this shit. It’s easy to forget, right? Doesn’t feel that special when you’re doing it every day. But — Dean, you remember what I said to you after the first Trial? Back at that ranch?”

_You’re the best damn hunter I’ve ever seen. Better than me. Better than Dad._

Dean swallows. “Yeah.”

“It’s — that,” says Sam. “It’s — we’re good because we _made_ ourselves good, and if we’re taking that for granted, it’s — it’s us we’re taking for granted.”

Themselves. Not Chuck, not even Dad; Dean tests the idea, like probing a sore tooth.

It doesn’t hurt, just like his cavities don’t hurt anymore, now that his gums have stopped bleeding.

“Yeah,” he echoes. “Us.”

\---

They talk through everything else they can think of.

Lock-picking — the drills Dad used to put them through. A couple times Dean had to innovate his way out of compromising situations; Sam rolls his eyes at that, and Charlie outright giggles.

“What about me getting sick?” Sam asks, and then somehow they’re reminiscing about how Dean used to load him up on Emergen-C at the first sign of a classmate’s sniffle; about his stupid smoothies and his killer immune system. “I mean, _I_ used to worry about you getting sick,” Dean points out, “used to worry all the time — great way to bring down Child Services, some twelve-year-old kid taking his eight-year-old brother with a fever to the ER.”

Sam is giving him a weird look. Kinda seems like Charlie is, too. “I don’t remember that.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean shrugs. “I do.”

Eventually they’re running on dregs — scrounging up any last thing they can think of. _What else has gone wrong?_

“Your puppy dog face!” Dean says suddenly, remembering. “You know — that chick who asked if it ever worked on anyone?”

Sam’s eyebrows scrunch together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you don’t,” Dean chuckles. “‘Cause you take it for granted, remember? When you were a kid — _God,_ you could get anyone to do anything. Puppy-dog-face your way out of parent-teacher meetings and your turn doing the dishes and — Jesus. There’d be one thing of mac and cheese left and you’d give me that _look_ and I’d be like — well, guess I’m eating peanut butter for dinner.”

He laughs. But Sam blinks.

“Dean, that’s —”

They’re all looking at him.

“Sad,” says Charlie. She actually looks upset. “Really fucking sad.”

Dean bristles. “Hey. I don’t judge your life choices —”

And there’s a hand on his shoulder. Cas’s. It shuts him up, abruptly and completely, and Cas says, “She means that — a child shouldn’t have been making those choices, Dean. You should have never had to worry if you’d have enough food for you and your brother to eat.”

A prickling heat starts at the back of Dean’s neck. Shame, and gratitude, and an overwhelming urge to flee; to tuck that shit away, to stop being _seen._

It’s one thing if Sam says that kind of thing, or even Charlie. It’s another when it’s Cas.

And there’s something else.

He doesn’t want to talk about it. But, he’s — well, he’s got to. If he ever wants to enjoy cheese again.

“I’ve been wondering,” he says, voice low, not meeting anyone’s eye, “if that’s why — the cavities, and the lactose thing. When I — back when we were kids, I was never sure there’d be enough food for, for either of us, never mind both, but when there was — I never worried if I could _eat_ it. I always could. Took that for granted, I guess.”

Cas’s fingers tighten on his shoulder.

They’re all still looking at him. Dean knows his face is red. He hates this; he fucking hates this —

“I’m afraid I bear some responsibility for that too,” Cas says.

Dean jolts. Sam blinks. Charlie raises her eyebrows.

Dean says, “What?”

“You _are_ mildly lactose intolerant.” Now that Dean’s turned to look, he can see the traces of embarrassment on Cas’s face. It makes him feel better, somehow, that he’s not the only one. “Adult onset, I believe. It only takes a mild healing every six months to a year. That and the cavities both.”

“Hang on,” says Dean. “You’re saying — _you’re_ the reason I can eat cheese?”

Cas blinks at him. “I suspect you could learn to manage it without me; there are lactase supplements available. But that is one way of looking at it, yes.”

“Cas,” says Dean, fervent, “I love you,” and then he’s suddenly very glad his face is already bright red, ‘cause if it weren’t — well, it would be now.

Cas stares back at him. Eyes searching, like they’re seeing more than Dean can say.

\---

It’s a few hours later — they’ve seen Charlie off, Sam is puttering around the bunker — that Dean goes to find Cas in his room.

_I love you._ The words keep ringing in his mind. He meant it to come out as a joke, and it was one, but —

They still haven’t really talked about Purgatory, or the prayer. They haven’t even said they’re good now, though it seems like they are; Cas looking at Dean like he always has, eyes all crinkled at the corners and mouth kind of fond, instead of set in a tense line.

Still. If Dean’s learned one thing from this fucking day, it’s —

He closes the door when he steps inside, leans back against it to brace himself. Cas turns toward him in surprise, and Dean kind of wants to close his eyes to make this easier, but he can’t — he’s looking at Cas.

“Sometimes,” he says, “I take you for granted.”

Cas opens his mouth like he’s going to argue.

“No — I mean, I know I do. And I don’t want to anymore, if I can help it. And I — I mean, you can tell me to fuck off and we’ll never talk about this again, but I gotta —”

It’s now or never.

He pushes himself off the door with a feeling like his body isn’t real. Like he’s not walking but falling, falling down a well, only it’s not a bad thing, because at the bottom is Cas’s face.

It takes three strides. He catches himself with a hand on the back of Cas’s chair. Then he bends down and slowly, carefully, kisses Cas on the mouth.

He pulls back. He thinks he might be breathing hard; his chest is moving in, out, in, out. Cas is staring up at him, and his eyes are blue, blue, blue.

“Like I said,” Dean’s saying, surprising himself with the words, with the vibration in his throat. “You don’t have to — we can go on like we were and I won’t ever bother you about it again. But I just had to, I had to —”

Cas pushes himself up out of his chair.

He moves around it, and then there’s nothing between them. Dean swallows, pivoting too, so that when Cas steps up into his space they’re facing each other — gazes dropping eyes to mouth, like they have so many times before.

Cas’s hand hovers over Dean’s hip. Then he lets it land, fingers smoothing the lines of Dean’s flannel, palm pressing flat to his side.

Cas says, “This isn’t happening because I — took it for granted you’d never act on it?”

Dean shivers. “I don’t think it works that way.”

Cas kisses him.

It’s a long, unfolding moment — careful and endless, like an indrawn breath. Cas’s lips are on Dean’s lips and then his hands are on Dean’s shoulders, the back of his neck; he’s tilting his chin and his lips part and his tongue slides against Dean’s, hungry, divine. Dean gasps and nearly loses his balance and his hands are in Cas’s clothes somehow, tangled — he doesn’t remember putting them there — and Cas makes a sound in his throat and then he’s shoving Dean a step back, another, until he’s braced against the wall.

_Good,_ Dean thinks vaguely. _Good, now I can’t fall over next time he does that._ But Cas draws back as he thinks it, eyebrows frowning, like he thinks he’s gone too far.

Dean catches him before he can step back.

“Just in case, though.” His voice comes out throaty. “I think you’d better tell me. Exactly what — _exactly_ what you’ve been thinking I wouldn’t do.”

Cas goes still. His gaze skims down Dean’s body, in a way that makes Dean dizzy; in a way that makes Dean kind of want to die.

He doesn’t want to die. He wants Cas.

“Or,” he says, “you could show me.”

Cas moves close again. And he’s smiling; smiling against Dean’s mouth as he murmurs —

“I think I could manage that.”

Dean shivers again.

Cas does.

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/190522333229/granted-38k-t-1510-coda-deancas-in-which).
> 
> ETA, 5/3/20: The tale of Dean and Cas and Blåhaj can now be read [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23975767).


End file.
